San Antonio College Library

Honoring the centennial of the birth of the pioneering naturalist, a compilation of essays celebrates Carson's contributions to the birth of the environmental movement, in a collection that features works by Al Gore, John Hay, and Linda Lear.

"This book is a comprehensive examination of pesticide use, pesticide harm, and alternatives to harmful pesticides. Levine highlights the role of farming, because a substantial majority - 70 percent or more annually - of pesticides are applied in agricultural uses, thereby making their way into the food chain and into the water supply."--Jacket.

The genetic engineering lobby boasts their modified plants require fewer pesticides and result in higher yields, increasingly pressures politicians and governments, and wants to extend its network worldwide. This program provides an insight into the controversial campaigns of the genetic engineering lobby and shows the role that the goal of profit maximization across the entire value added chain is having.

Describes the background of Rachel Carson and her book, discusses the question of pesticides as it stands today and shows what the average citizen can do to change the situation.

"Rachel Carson's seminal book Silent Spring, published in 1962, stands as one of the most important books of the twentieth century. Powerful and eloquent, the book exposed the dangers of indiscriminate chemical pesticide use. It also inspired important and long-lasting changes in environmental science and government policy. In this thought-provoking volume, Frederick Rowe Davis sets Carson's scientific work in the context of the twentieth century,...

"For as long as man has dwelt on this planet, spring has been the season of rebirth, and the singing of birds. Now in some parts of America spring is strangely silent, for many of the birds are dead - incidental victims of our reckless attempt to control our environment by the use of chemicals that poison not only the insects against which they are directed but the birds in the air, the fish in the rivers, the earth which supplies our food, and, inevitably...

Modern consumers are well aware that the food they eat is tainted by pesticidal residues; they are less aware that their great-grandparents faced the same hazard. The author's history of this public health menace emphasizes that insecticides have been contaminating produce since the introduction of chemical pesticides in the 1860s. This book examines the period before the publication of Rachel Carson's famous 'Silent Spring', tracing the origins of...

Rachel Carson, founder of the modern environmental movement, began work on her seminal book Silent Spring in the late 1950s, when a dizzying array of synthetic pesticides had come into use. Leading this chemical onslaught was the insecticide DDT. Effective against crop pests as well as insects that transmitted human diseases such as typhus and malaria, DDT had at first appeared safe. But as its use expanded, alarming reports surfaced of collateral...